Tuesday, 16 May 2017

Policies
can invariably be presented in more than one way; and most policies have
ramifications elsewhere, even if that isn’t entirely clear at the time. Yesterday’s announcement by the Tories that
they will legislate to allow people to take up to a year off to look after sick
relatives appears a strange one, for several reasons, but I find myself
wondering whether this isn’t a victory for presentation over substance.

Firstly,
it seems to have emerged from nowhere and to have been given very little
thought. The implications for businesses
are far from clear, as many businesses have been quick to point out; how they
will be expected to cover for such absences is an obvious concern for
them. The implications for the staff
themselves haven’t been made explicit either – whilst their jobs will be kept
open for them when they return, it’s an open question as to how they will be
able to support themselves unpaid for a year.
The detail is completely absent: it’s easy for the Tories to say that
they’ll think about that later, but it means that voters are being asked to buy
something superficially attractive without knowing how it will work in
practice.

And
secondly, it seems so un-Tory-like.
Imposing extra costs and bureaucracy on businesses is exactly what they
normally claim to be against; their more usual approach is to talk about
getting rid of rules and regulations. Of
course they’re trying to steal Labour votes by appearing to adopt some of
Labour’s traditional approaches, but this one looks like an attempt to sound
like they think Labour ought to sound without really understanding what that
means.

There
is, however, another possible explanation, and it’s much more in line with traditional
Tory approaches. There is a looming
crisis for care services as the population ages, and the costs of providing
care are inevitable going to increase. Freeing up relatives to provide care on a voluntary basis is likely
to help to ease that pressure, and reduce the demand for state-provided
care. This could, of course, merely be
an unexpected consequence of an otherwise well-intentioned policy, and perhaps I’m just
being my usual cynical self; but I can’t help wondering whether this new ‘right
for employees’ is actually a cost-saving measure being spun as something it
really isn’t.